


Ashes and Glass

by orphan_account



Series: Violetescence [3]
Category: Homestuck, MSPaint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Character Development, Character Study, Gen, House of Leaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-21
Updated: 2011-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:59:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Lalonde enters the medium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes and Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this takes place before See You on the Other Side and Convergent Recombination.

He watched the fires outside burn with cool detachment. Panic and rage had left him long ago. Now there was only acceptance. It was out of his hands. Either Strider got him in, or she didn't. It was that simple.

He chewed on the end of a fountain pen as he watched the flames leap higher. To be perfectly frank, he preferred the flame to the unseasonably late April snow which had plagued the area of late. He'd always loathed snow.

Where the hell was Strider...?

\-- gaianGearhead [GG] began pestering tortileGhostwriter [TG] \-- 

  
GG: okay so i basically just got my butt totally owned in the process of getting you these disks  
GG: you'd better be appreciating the effort man >(    
TG: heh  
TG: more than you know  
TG: anyway are we doing this    
GG: hells yeah  
GG: where doing this  
GG: where making this...   
TG: ...   
GG: occur  
GG: B)    
TG: then lets rock the fucking house   


It was madness and frustration, of course.

“STRIDER! Why the hell are you putting everything in different places!?” lamented David, vaulting down stairs for what felt like the fifth time. Of course, he'd once again forgotten that Sburb apparently had no audio function (a rather large design flaw, he thought) and thus his complaints were useless. He whipped out his laptop and began typing furiously.

  
TG: you couldnt possibly think about putting things a little closer together  
TG: i mean i am all for the virtues of healthy exercise  
TG: but we are somewhat short on time here   
GG: look okay its not my fault you live in a techno eurorave mansion thing okay  
GG: well okay a pretty rad cool mansion no lies  
GG: but still not my fault!  
GG: anyway shut up for a bit okay i gotta finish   


He watched as the huge statue of Don Quixote that his mother had placed in the foyer was lifted over his head and used to open the cruxtruder, the bottom half mysteriously appearing halfway through the wall. He still wasn't sure how the hell that worked – the way objects, once lifted, would interact with some objects but not with others. A peculiarity of the game, he supposed. Now wasn't really the time for contemplation though.

In the process, Jade also managed to knock over the telescope in the observatory, knocking out both the (extremely delicate, extremely expensive) lenses within. God. Damn it. He supposed it hardly mattered – he didn't even know where Mother was, and they were about to enter another universe anyway.

“Jade, how the hell am I going to – oh.”

She had helpfully built him a door to the outside, where the alchimeter was, and another staircase down to his room where she'd placed the Totem Lathe (after dumping his bed. Damn it. He'd liked those sheets.

Okay. First, the sprite. Then, the totem lathe.

Really, there was only one thing he'd even remotely considered for prototyping – Jaspers, that dear old cat. Lifting up his corpse, he tossed it into the sprite. Then the only thing left was to try a second prototyping...

He looked down in the foyer. There had been that prince doll his mother had bought him (dolls? For a boy? Really, mother, could you make it any more obvious that you'd wanted a daughter, not a son?), to which he'd added chainmail tentacles during his extremely brief Lovecraft phase. Thank goodness Mother had been willing to buy him enough links – shit had taken forever to finish. But finished it was.

It was heavy, but he managed to get it into the sprite.

Only one thing left to do. The cruxite artifact.

Rose had received a blue pomegranate. He assumed he'd get the same, but in violet. He was thus rather surprised to find himself facing a mirror.

The Don statue's sword and shield clattered to the ground nearby, managing to just miss the mirror. The meteor grew closer and closer, but for a moment he was completely caught by his own reflection.

He looked tired. He looked...

Scared.

He wasn't scared, of course not, he was fine. He raised a hand to touch the smooth surface. But what to do? Whatever could this mean?

He glanced back at Jaspers, trying to see if the sprite had any answers. Jaspers grinned like a Cheshire and purred loudly, waving his tentacles.

Useless.

 _Grinning like a Cheshire...?_

He looked back at the mirror.

With some great effort, he lifted Don Quixote's stone sword. The thing must have weighed fifty pounds, he could barely keep it lifted as he walked back over. He let it rest on the ground, ash raining down around him, bringing it over to the mirror, and gazed once again at his reflection.

As he looked, everything seemed to go _quiet_. The crackling of the flame slowed to a dull roar, the endless impacts seemed to stop, the shaking of the house's foundations became a mere background note. The ash swirled around him like strange warm snow, his footprints from the staircase starkly outlined in the red light.

 _Through the Looking Glass. Destruction of the ego. … destruction of the self...?_

He almost couldn't do it. To end the _self..._ to end...

“If I don't do this, I'll be ended in a far more literal manner.”

He set the huge stone sword like a lance and charged the mirror. The tip of the blade hit his reflection in the center of the record shirt Jade had bought for him, and he felt a _twisting_ as spider-like spiraling cracks spread across the mirror's surface from the impact. The roar came back, louder than before, more like a horrific growl; the whole place shook and became bathed in brilliant light as the meteor bore down, streaking towards the house.

The last thing he knew was the pain of a few stray shards of glass across his skin. Darkness claimed him.

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was initially inspired by adamantApoplectic's wonderful AU (avaliable here: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgv9xcjq_190htvp3xd4&pli=1 ), some fanart done of said AU, and roleplay shenanigans on Livejournal.


End file.
